350 workers added to Covered California call lines

Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee, left, greets more than 250 new employees at a call center in Fresno, Calif., on Monday, Feb. 10, 2014. The new employees began training to help uninsured Californianís navigate the health care exchange aimed at enrolling them for medical coverage. (AP Photo/Scott Smith)

Hundreds of customer service representatives will be added to Covered California’s phone lines, to help cut wait times and to enroll more state residents into health care plans before a March deadline, state officials announced Monday.

At least 350 customer service representatives will be added to the 900 already in place, said Peter Lee, Executive Director for Covered California. About 30 of the new people hired will speak Spanish, while others will offer help in Mandarin, Vietnamese and Korean languages.

The extra employees represent an increase in staff of roughly 40 percent and the hiring comes just as Covered California, the state’s health plan exchange, is hoping to enroll thousands of state residents by their March 31 deadline.

The goal is to cut the waiting time, which has gone as high as 51 minutes before a caller can speak to someone. Lee said he ideally would like to see the wait time down to 30 seconds.

“We know that many of the hundreds of thousands of Californians who have signed up have had a good experience, but we know there are many who have not had a good experience. We’re going to improve that,” Lee said during a teleconference from Fresno.

“We know over the last three months, unfortunately, because of incredible demand, many consumers have not had the ideal experience,” Lee said. “We want a first class experience.”

From Oct. 1 to Dec 31, about 500,000 Californians enrolled in health care plans. The majority of those qualified for subsidized funding from the federal government.

Tens of thousands signed up in December to meet the December mandate, placing a strain on the Covered California website and call center.

To avoid that, Lee said 4,000 certified enrollment counselors will continue to fan out statewide over the next several weeks at schools, churches and libraries hoping to sign up the uninsured, while another 4,000 certified agents also can help residents.

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In addition, Covered California will add 25 people to work on their live Web chat line.

A recent analysis released by Covered California shows that 132,209 Los Angeles County residents enrolled in health plans from October to December. That’s 74 percent of the target number, which ends on March 31.

About 40,000 residents from San Bernardino and Riverside counties enrolled in plans through Covered California. That’s about 50 percent of the targeted number.

But it is unclear how many of those were uninsured, and how many had insurance, but wanted a better plan.

“We anticipate March is going to be a busy month,” Lee said, adding that if the uninsured do not enroll by March 31, they face a tax penalty and could lose the chance for a subsidy.

Lee said the website also will work to improve the physicians directory, which was taken offline last week, because of errors.

“Until we get that right, we’re taking that down,” Lee said.

Covered California provides a comparison of costs for various health insurance plans that residents can purchase as part of a law under the federal Affordable Care Act. The website launched on Oct. 1. More than 500,000 state residents enrolled into plans from October to December.

Lee said launching the state site as part of health care reform has been nothing short of historical.